The former Maurice Micklewhite took his screen name from the 1954 film The Caine Mutiny. Caine entered motion pictures in 1956 and played a variety of roles in such British productions as A Hill in Korea (1956), How to Murder a Rich Uncle (1957), The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), and Zulu (1964). Success came with The Ipcress File (1965)—the first of four films in which Caine portrayed British spy Harry Palmer—but his real breakthrough was in the title role of Alfie (1966), for which he received an Academy Award nomination as best actor. His other successful films of the 1960s include Funeral in Berlin (1966), Gambit (1966), The Wrong Box (1966), Hurry Sundown (1967), and The Italian Job (1969).
In these early films, Caine established himself as a versatile actor whose everyman qualities were well suited to a variety of roles. His cool urbanity is perhaps the only constant among performances that include cynical secret agents, gregarious playboys, rugged adventurers, refined gentlemen, humble schoolteachers, and psychotic killers. His star quality is not sacrificed for such versatility, and he retains his affable Cockney persona in most roles. He is especially deft at light comedy and usually manages to reveal subtly humorous elements within a given screenplay.
By the 1970s Caine had achieved international stardom. He appeared in the cult classic Get Carter (1971) and received another best actor Oscar nomination for Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Sleuth (1972), in which he starred opposite Laurence Olivier. He followed these successes with such popular films as John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and John Sturges’s The Eagle Has Landed (1976). He continued his prodigious output during the 1980s, appearing in some two dozen films during the decade. Though many of these films were dismal failures, Caine’s reputation did not suffer, because he had garnered respect for being such a tireless workhorse. “I didn’t go in search of some of my more questionable films,” he once said, “I was always on the lookout for the great roles. When they weren’t offered to me, I’d look for the good ones and when those passed me by, I’d take the ones that would pay the rent.”
His better films of the 1980s include Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980), Deathtrap (1982), Educating Rita (1983; best actor Oscar nomination), Mona Lisa (1986), Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (1986; Academy Award for best supporting actor), Without a Clue (1988), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988). By the end of the 20th century, Caine had appeared in more than 100 films. He won his second best-supporting-actor Oscar for The Cider House Rules (1999) and was nominated as best actor for his performance as a conflicted British journalist in Vietnam in The Quiet American (2002).
In 2005 Caine appeared in director Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, playing the superhero’s butler and confidant, Alfred. The film was a critical and commercial success. He reprised the role in the sequels The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). Caine’s other notable films include the thrillers Children of Men (2006) and The Prestige (2006), the latter also directed by Nolan. In 2007 he starred in Kenneth Branagh’s remake of Sleuth, portraying the character originally played by Olivier.
Caine later appeared as a pensioner turned vigilante in Harry Brown (2009) and as the mentor to a corporate spy (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) in Nolan’s science-fiction thriller Inception (2010). Caine then provided voices for the animated films Gnomeo & Juliet (2011) and Cars 2 (2011) and played a stranded adventurer in the family-oriented Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012). He joined the ensemble cast of Nolan’s space drama Interstellar (2014) as a NASA scientist leading a team in search of a habitable planet in the wake of catastrophic war and famine on Earth. Caine turned to lighter fare with an appearance as a spymaster in the comic thriller Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014).
Caine authored several best-selling books. Acting in Film (1987) is considered an invaluable resource for actors, and his memoirs What’s It All About? (1993) and The Elephant to Hollywood (2010) affirm his reputation as a gifted raconteur. In 1993 Caine was made Commander of the British Empire, and he was knighted in 2000. In 2011 he was made Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, the highest cultural honour in France.
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